Feb 1, 2023
From February 5 to 7, 1978, the Blizzard of ‘78 hit New England. It started later and was much more powerful than most local meteorologists had anticipated. In the preceding days, weather centers knew something was coming, but they just couldn’t make up their minds about how much. Meteorologist Harvey Leonard from WCVB-TV did predict that Massachusetts was going to get hit hard.
When the snow didn’t start in the early morning as forecasters had predicted, skeptical people got into their cars and drove off to work – in retrospect, a big mistake. The blizzard on its way to the northeast had an unusual beginning, and most of the people of Medfield became aware of the storm’s creation only after the snow had stopped 34 hours later.
(If you asked Midwesterners, they’d say their Great Blizzard of ’78 occurred between January 25 and 27, 1978, dumped 52 inches of snow on Muskegon, Michigan, blew 10- to 20-foot drifts and wind chill of -50 degrees in Indiana, and caused 71 fatalities and $100 million in damage.)
Meteorologists mentioned in news reports that the sun and the new moon aligned to cause high tides that produced record floods. In Massachusetts the flood destroyed 2,000 homes between Marblehead and Plymouth, damaging another 10,000 homes. There were 80+ mph winds, with gusts to 110 mph in Scituate, and about 100 deaths attributed to the storm. Damage was estimated at $500 million, close to $3 billion in 2023 dollars.
Medfield students left school and parents left their jobs early to get home, but the snow fell so fast that staying inside would have been safer.
When the blizzard finally hit some 3,500 cars had to be abandoned on the highways. The falling snow nearly covered the entirety of most cars, leaving only the top of the cars bare and free of snow. Snow drifts trapped 3,000 cars along eight miles of Rt. 128. In New England cities, the blizzard stranded thousands of more cars that took days to dig out. In further tragedy, 13 of those motorists stayed inside their snowbound cars with engines running and died from carbon monoxide poisoning.
Except for snowplows and other emergency vehicles, no one was allowed to drive for a full week during the cleanup, unless they had special dispensation.
Governor Michael Dukakis was on the David Brudnoy radio show on WBZ radio with the storm just beginning. As the storm and clean-up progressed, sweater-clad Dukakis became a familiar figure on local television, lending his emotional support to many, like the residents from Revere calling from the second floor of their houses wondering whether they’d survive.
Additionally, many people were trapped in their workplace, living off vending machine food during the ordeal. People slept in the pews of Saint Bartholomew’s church in Needham, sheltering 2,000.
In Dedham, 300 stranded motorists ate popcorn and watched movies at the Showcase Cinema near Routes 1 and 128. Hockey fans in Boston who went to watch the Beanpot College Tournament got stranded at Boston Garden. For several days those fans ate hot dogs and slept in the bleachers and locker rooms.
The postal service couldn’t deliver mail. One mailman got stranded and had to sleep on stacks at the post office for two nights. Especially tragic was Peter Gosselin, age 10, from Uxbridge, jumped of his porch into the deep snow, hit his head, and died in a snowbank. Peter’s body wasn’t found for three weeks.
The snowplows in Medfield kept on going nearly around the clock while piling up snow on both sides of the streets and other main thruways. On Spring Street, the snow was stacked about six feet high on both sides of the Route 27, prompting some residents in Medfield to think that somehow the town’s highway department hadn’t kept up with various weather reports. Some people thought that the lack of snow removal came down to negligence.
But those opinions were totally wrong. While many residents slept at night in their homes, the highway department was working very hard around the clock to keep the roads plowed and passable. The storm lasted for 34 hours, with four inches falling nearly every hour. Due to school being canceled, many high school kids went with their snow shovels to the highway department offering to help with snow removal and were paid $5 per hour for their hard work. Their help turned out to be invaluable as the teens were able to shovel out the front doors and driveways of the elderly.
One young teenager who was a budding ornithologist made a very sturdy bird feeder fashioned as an avian oasis. He nailed it to the top of an old wooden fence post and filled it with birdseed and suet, leftover animal fat and pan drippings from the family oven. During the days before the blizzard, the bird feeder practically went untouched. But when the storm hit, the feeder was home to many starlings and blue jays. There was plenty of food for all, and the smaller birds got to eat their fair share of the bird seed and stale bread.
Some children living near the Vasaturo home on Miller Street noticed a tall snow drift in the back of the Vasaturo yard. The kids thought they’d have a great opportunity to sneak into the yard undetected while the storm was still brewing. While the visibility was still poor, the kids hollowed out the snow drift, making a perfect tunnel from one end to the other. When the Vasaturo family finally caught on and discovered what the kids had done, they grabbed their cameras and took plenty of color photos. They were delighted to see all that ingenuity from the kids playing in the snow.
When the snow finally stopped there were plenty of snow mountains piled up where the highway department had been forced to dump snow. One of those massive snow piles was right next to the Larkin’s Liquor Store and Cumberland Farms. That crowded and open land was still somewhat vacant. For all the neighborhood kids from nearby downtown the timing was just right because that’s where 25 feet high of plowed snow was discarded, at that unofficial dumpsite. The kids climbed to the top of the hill of snow and then jumped feet first into the deeper snow at the back of the hill. Fun was had by all while the snow brought out the best in everyone.
But for many of the people caught in the blizzard, there was no fun at all. There were a 100 people who were killed and 4,000 injured. Wind speeds reached 79 mph at Logan Airport. From Provincetown to Eastern Maine the northeasterly winds flooded the coast while 10,000 people evacuated. Many of the firemen helping to evacuate many residents suffered from hyperthermia and frostbite as they rescued storm victims.
In Massachusetts, a massive effort to clear Logan’s runway allowed 200 troops from Fort Bragg and Devens to land and manage the emergency response. Some of those troops were from South Carolina and had never experienced snow before.
Dennis Flaherty’s Memories of the Blizzard of 1978
Even after all the town sidewalks had been cleared, Medfield’s letter carriers had a lot of trouble getting up the poorly shoveled front walks to the mailboxes by the doors, and the mail didn’t get delivered.
Dennis Flaherty, a teacher in Medway, had a plow hitched up to the front of his Jeep Cherokee. To keep up with the snowfall, Dennis knew he’d have to plow his regular customers’ driveways more than once. He gave priority to customers with sloping driveways, trying to get the first driveway pass done before they got home from work. Dennis planned to come back later for a second pass, and he knew it would be just that much harder if people drove on the snow and packed it down so it became ice.
(That happened at a multi-family house at 15 Spring Street – people had driven over the snow, so the big driveway amounted to nothing more than a series of ice ruts upwards of a foot deep. Dennis got into a price dispute with a tenant there and told him to go shovel it himself.)
The snow had been falling heavily, and the whipping winds created deep drifts. Around 7 pm, Dennis went home for a quick dinner. By 8 pm, he was back in his Jeep, ready to resume plowing. He drove west on Main Street and turned right on North Meadows Road. He had the plow blade raised well off the ground, but the snow drifts had gotten so deep that even with the plow blade in the “up” position, it was catching snow and sending it up and over his Jeep, so Dennis couldn’t see anything beyond his plow blade.
It was not safe to continue, so he returned home, planning to rise very early the next morning. But then Dennis realized the snow was just too deep for his vehicle. He couldn’t clear his customers’ driveways.
Here are some memories from other residents:
“We shoveled a narrow trench in our driveway, took a picture of our kids holding a yardstick to show how deep the snow was, and walked across the street to visit our neighbors. While we were there, we heard snowblowers. When we came home, we were astonished to find Carl Johnson as he had just finished clearing our entire driveway – as a neighborly gift!”
Another said, “The guy next door had permission to drive, and he came to our house and asked if we needed anything as he went to the store. We thanked him and asked for milk, eggs, bread – and a six-pack. He came back with milk, eggs, bread – and no beer (he was a Mormon).”
From Claire Shaw: “Ralph and I were living on Forest Street in ’78. After the blizzard, we walked Route 27 to town with Jim and Kay Regan, our neighbors, to buy some supplies. On the way back, slogging through waist-deep snow, Jim exclaimed, ‘It’s two miles down – and 10 miles back!’”
It seems as though all the stories about the Blizzard of ‘78 have the common thread of a brutal snowstorm that many remember went on for three days. No matter what the people may have suffered, the strong sense of people coming together was paramount in getting though the storm of the century. Many remember the storm fondly because it built a sense of community that will never be forgotten.